Scotland County native Martha Gibson will be joined by fellow Psycho Poets Kara Dermo, Yadira Ramos and Jalieh Shepard Thursday at the St. Andrews University Writers' Forum.

Free and open to the public, the forum begins at 8 p.m. in Orange Main Lounge on the university campus.

A recipient of the Ethel Fortner Writer and Community Award, Gibson is no stranger to St. Andrews and its writing program. Her interest in poetry as a psychological process and not just a creative activity grew out of her experience in the psychology of dreams class, a news release said.

When she was preparing a presentation on how dreams inform creativity, she began to dream her presentation in poetic language. Acutely aware of the poems arising out of a place of embodiment, she sought to investigate if others could experience this phenomenon. She invited several female acquaintances to participate in a weekly poetry-writing group, now known as the Psycho Poets, as part of the research for her doctoral dissertation in psychology at the University of West Georgia.

Ramos, a native of Havana, Cuba, came to Georgia in 2005 to reunite with her father. She has earned both a bachelor's and master's degree in psychology from the University of West Georgia. Now a caseworker in Atlanta, she started reading her own poetry since becoming part of the Psycho Poets. Her poetry reflects an interest in transpersonal experiences and attempts to reconcile emotions associated with grief.

Dermo is a Carrollton, Ga., native currently studying chemistry with the goal of one day working in the medical field. She met Gibson while they were both volunteering for a Juvenile Justice Camp sponsored by the Carrollton Probation Office. Writing with the Psycho Poets is Dermo's first attempt to write creatively and has been a life-changing process.

A Boston native, Shepard grew up in Brazil. A graduate of Dartmouth College, she is also a certified body-centered core-energetics therapist with training in conflict-resolution and experience in corporate and experiential seminar training and facilitation.

As a life-learner, traveler, author and poet she has immersed herself in multiple cultures. Her poetry reflects her interest in phenomenology and the exploration of how one defines self and how that relates to the embodiment of experience and the unfolding breadth and depths of human possibilities.

She is presently completing a master's degree in psychology at the University of West Georgia.

For more information about the Writers' Forum, call (910) 277-5310 or email press@sapc.edu.